Tag: finding your purpose

My heart has broken a handful of different ways in the last five years, each one rocking my world and transforming my heart in its own uniquely difficult way. But this year, my heart broke in a way unlike any other.

This isn’t the first time God has asked me to do something a little crazy.

There was the time He asked me to give up my idyllic life in suburbia to move to NYC… Twice. There was the time my marriage imploded and God asked me to stay with husband, and another time, when God prompted me to give – literally every cent I had – to the church. Possibly even crazier, is that God had asked me to write through it all on this blog!

In the last three years, I have written through the darkest days of depression, and when divorce seemed inevitable. I’ve lost a baby on this blog, and have written about my tumultuous relationship with my father. I’ve even written extensively about porn! (joy.)

But now, God is asking me to do something that challenges me even further, and to my very core:

I didn’t ask God for much. I wanted to get my Master’s degree in teaching, get married to a man who wasn’t a pastor, and have three kids by the time I was thirty. I wanted to live in suburbia till death do us part, and in close proximity to a Walmart. (I love a good Walmart.)

Might sound simple to you, maybe even boring, but it’s the life my heart desired to live.

After traveling to England, Wales and the latest, Miami (…I know, random…) And after scrambling to finish an extreeeeemely vulnerable article for Newspring Church this week, I was certain I had ZERO energy or honesty left. But surprise, surprise… here I am.

But to clarify, this is more of a journal entry than a blog post. (Which is code for: I wrote this last night and didn’t edit it.)

Confession: It’s hard for me to let my daughter play in the driveway, or allow her to let go of my hand in the grocery store without so palpably, believing something is going to go terribly wrong.

I check the locks multiple times a night, and I can’t tell you the last time I spoke a dream out loud. Not because I don’t have dreams (…at least I think I still have dreams…) but because deep down a part of me believes God might shoot them down like a spiked volleyball, the moment I find the courage to speak them into existence.

— Why? Because I am jaded. I am fearful. And I am coming out of such a difficult season that was so bad for so long, that I find myself struggling to embrace the good, without looking over my shoulder anticipating the next ruthless reality, that may sneak its way in and devour everything I have worked so hard for.

And yet recently, I have felt God lovingly inviting me to do something so ludicrous that my jaded heart can barely comprehend it….

3 words that are equally terrific as they are terrifying — “Enjoy your life”

I always assumed the people – most obviously – following God, were the ones overflowing with compassion like Mother Teresa. Who were likely teaching a Sunday school class (or three) and could correctly recite at least ⅓ of the Bible from memory — and in the King James Version, of course.

But following God isn’t always as simple as memorizing Bible verses and letting the cute old man cut you in line at the grocery store. (It hasn’t been for me at least…)

I don’t know about you, but there have been times when God asks me to do something so unthinkably scary, that it has me curled up in bed and hiding under the covers. Terrified, and eating my body weight in hydrogenated oil laden snacks, in an attempt to calm the fear that is raging in my soul.

That is where I’ve found myself this week (and the potato chip crumbs dusting my keyboard as I type, are proof.)

The reason for my fear, you ask? …My husband is back in New York City.